Hooray, I have a digital music store now! You can buy DRM-free Brad Sucks tracks in high quality 192k MP3, OGG or FLAC formats. You can also buy my entire album in whichever format you like with the album art and lyrics included. Buy buy buy!

I still feel strongly that people sharing my songs is vital to me as a musician, so I have no plans to stop giving my music away for free. But it’s clear that many people want to pay for high quality versions of my songs and I’d like to avoid the middle-man and DRM and offer that directly if I can.

A while back I thought it would be cool to install one of those LED belt buckles in my guitar. And now my dream has finally become reality:

It was easier to do than I thought. Take one slightly abused guitar:

Take one LED belt buckle:

Flip the LED belt buckle over and there’s a piece jutting out that’s supposed to go into your belt:

Drill a hole in your guitar (not too big or the buckle will flop around):

Push the belt buckle into the hole.

Video:

It’s pretty sturdy but I’ll probably tie it to my guitar strap hook to make sure it stays attached to the guitar if it falls out. Also I may install a switch so I don’t have to pull it out to turn it on and off.

Something I was thinking of: is there an easy way to stream podcasts into Second Life lands? That’d be another huge source of royalty free audio and would be pretty interesting. Virtual radio stations.

When I use Live in a live environment, I run it as a Ã¢â‚¬ËœCustom user interfaceÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ or Ã¢â‚¬â„¢shellÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ in Windows XP Professional. Basically what this is if you arenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t familiar with it, is replacing Explorer with Live as a shell. This means there is no desktop environment, no taskbar, no start menu, no applets running, etc.

There are many advantages to this when using Live – improved stability, free memory, improved performance, etc. The disadvantage is you lose a practical way to multi-task. (But who needs multi-tasking when you only need to run Live live?)

To accomplish this in Windows XP Pro, type Ã¢â‚¬Ëœgpedit.mscÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ in the run command. This brings up the Ã¢â‚¬ËœGroup Policy EditorÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. Under Ã¢â‚¬ËœUser ConfigurationÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ / Ã¢â‚¬ËœAdministrative TemplatesÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ / Ã¢â‚¬ËœSystemÃ¢â‚¬â„¢, there is a setting called Ã¢â‚¬ËœCustom user interfaceÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. By default this setting is Ã¢â‚¬ËœNot ConfiguredÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ (meaning Explorer).

If you select Ã¢â‚¬ËœEnabledÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ and type in the path to Live (or any application), Windows will boot into Live upon startup without anything else running.

You must include parenthesis if the path to Live contains spaces – ex. Ã¢â‚¬Å“C:\Program Files\Ableton\Live x.xx\Program\Live x.xx.exeÃ¢â‚¬Â.

Restart computer!

If you do the above & wish to change the setting back, just hit CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the Task Manager, hit New Task (Run), type Ã¢â‚¬Ëœgpedit.mscÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ and change the setting back to Ã¢â‚¬ËœNot ConfiguredÃ¢â‚¬â„¢. Restart and youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re back to Explorer. If you use a sound device that requires an applet to be running all the time, then I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t really know what your success will be. I used to use an Emagic EMI USB card that installed itself as a system service and always ran at boot-up. I never had any problems running Live as a shell. If you decide to give it a shot, it wonÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t mess up your system in any way. If for instance you enable this setting & the path or program is not found upon boot-up, Windows$ will load the default Explorer shell.

Hardcore! This is an awesome tip and the sort of thing I was looking for. I used to use Litestep and some other Explorer shell replacements so I know how bulky just having Explorer running is. And pointless if all you’re doing is running one program.

I do wonder if it’d be better to use that approach but also dual boot to protect against whatever crap is already in your registry, pointless drivers and services, etc.

Thanks to Peter for posting my questions and for the readers for dropping knowledge like bombs

I use my laptop for regular stuff but am wondering if it might be better to have a separate XP install with minimal services, applications, no internet, etc. for live performance. Or maybe I’m just worrying too much.

I think it’s cool and all but I don’t get why Apple can’t offer DRM-free downloads for those labels (or artists) that want them. That’d give people who reject DRM a competitive advantage and put the squeeze on the majors.